La ‘fede di Roma’ nella modernità totalitaria fascista. Il mito della romanità e l’Istituto di Studi Romani tra Carlo Galassi Paluzzi e Giuseppe Bottai, in: Studi Romani, 2010, vol. 58, n° 1-4, p. 359-381

2023

2022

The question of the persecution of Jews by fascism has been at the centre of historiographical debate for years now. This paper focuses on the reaction and interpretation that one of Italy’s main cultural institutes between the two world wars gave to Italian fascism. The Institute of Roman Studies, which counted leading Italian scholars among its collaborators, quickly welcomed the new fascist line and associated it with the tradition and myth of Rome. The paper demonstrates how in its policies an idea of race took shape and came very close to the Roman-national racism of Nicola Pende and Giacomo Acerbo. The aim was to shape a «respectable» vision capable of finding an ideological synthesis that could dialogue with the Holy See and impose a form of racism that would no longer be moderate but less aligned with the German model. Accordingly, the paper demonstrates how the Institute of Roman Studies was both a place where diverse tensions were present, inherent in mass politics, produced by the consecration of politics and by the ideologisation of religion.

in «Studi Storici», LIII, 2, 2012, pp. 421-438, 2012

A few weeks after the March on Rome, the fasces symbol was chosen as distinctive icon of the new political course. To reconstruct the ancient symbol was called the great archaeologist Giacomo Boni, who had always combined the intellect of the most advanced techniques of archeology and restoration to the almost sacral concept of his mission of recall of Romanity. Although Boni lived only the beginning of the Ventennio, he prematurely understood the symbolic and liturgical features related to ancient Rome that would have had a primary role in the elaboration of the fascist cult of Romanity and its rituals. Boni imagined for the new regime a series of liturgies and rites that would have had an important echo in the propaganda of the following years.

The myth of ancient Rome is a propagandistic instrument through which the Fascist regime justifies the most important topics of its political program. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the Fascism, between the visual and rhetoric communication, deformed the original meaning of the best known symbols and rituals of the ancient Rome to legitimize ideologically its power.

teCLa - temi di Critica e Letteratura artistica - Rivista online dell'Università degli Studi di Palermo - Dipartimento di Studi Culturali Arti Storia Comunicazione, 2014

http://www.unipa.it/tecla/comitati_autori/profilo_manfren.php L’articolo tratta il tema della presenza dell’antico nella stampa del Ventennio, analizzando in particolare il caso de “La Rivista Illustra del Popolo d’Italia”, edita dal 1923 al 1943 come allegato mensile del quotidiano mussoliniano “Il Popolo d’Italia”. Nella prima sezione, dopo un’introduzione su genesi, struttura e collaboratori della rivista, il saggio fa una panoramica sugli articoli di argomento artistico -letterario, soffermandosi in particolar modo su quelli a tematica archeologica; nella seconda parte del testo, invece, vengono analizzate alcune tavole e copertine del periodico, mettendo in luce la presenza di iconografie e soggetti strettamente legati alla Roma antica. Scopo del saggio è dunque fornire un ulteriore esempio della strumentalizzazione propagandistica del passato romano operata dal regime, il quale trasforma la stampa illustrata in un vero e proprio mezzo di diffusione di una iconografia popolare dell’antico, che viene lì riproposto attraverso modalità rappresentative più semplici e pedagogiche, ma allo stesso tempo suggestive e affascinanti.